With more than 100 attendees in the audience, Representatives Kilmer and Strickland answered questions about salmon recovery, green infrastructure, protecting tribal treaty rights and helping local governments and community groups get federal dollars working on the ground.
Both Representatives said that one of their top priorities for this year is passing the PUGET SOS Act (believe it or not, it’s an acronym: Promoting United Government Efforts To Save Our Sound). Currently included in the National Defense Authorization Act bill under consideration by Congress, the PUGET SOS Act aims to improve federal-state agency coordination and accelerate habitat restoration and clean water efforts around the Sound. As Representative Strickland pointed out, climate change is a national security issue, and restoring Puget Sound will help improve the climate resilience of communities from Olympia to Port Townsend to Blaine.
